Visual Design articles

Nothing can ruin a design like typography that doesn’t fit. Whether it’s too big (or too small), improper type scaling is a major problem. It’s a problem for more designs than you might think. Too commonly you visit a website where the type renders beautifully on a desktop browser, only to revisit later from a phone and find it difficult to read. It happens all the time. The issue is that the type wasn’t truly scaled for each device. It’s...

WeTransfer is one of the mostly widely admired start-ups of the last decade. In many ways it embodies what we tell our clients to aspire to: a simple idea, solving a common problem, well executed. What really makes WeTransfer standout is the high-value it places on design; since its launch in 2009, WeTransfer has used design to add interest to what is typically a mundane process: transferring files from one computer to another. WeTransfer has...

When you design for the web, no matter the industry, there are expectations that must be met, and realities that must be accounted for. Although this is true for all forms of web design, it is especially true for logo design. This is something we’ve encountered numerous times. Think about the many different conventions of logo design. They’re usually placed in the top left-hand corner of the page, they are usually linked to the homepage,...

It seems like the current buzz word in the design industry and everyone wants one. But how exactly can a product benefit from having a living, breathing design language? I’m going to try break down the very basics so you can understand why it’s needed. Creating an underlying language will unite our design philosophies and methodologies across our platform. So why do we need a design language? There are two ways of looking at it, from an internal...

We’re all familiar with the old Zendesk logo, right? The memorable image of the Buddha who’s wearing a headset (melding old-fashioned mindfulness with modern-day tech) was an instantly recognizable logo of a big brand in today’s tech industry. Now, the new Zendesk logo is a combination mark of a logotype or wordmark design together with an iconic or symbolic logo while the old one with the Buddha was your classic iconic or symbolic logo....

The most successful brands understand that knowing their audience and how to communicate with them is vital to their success. For better or worse, it often comes down to a simple logo. We’ve all seen our fair share of re-brandings and logo transformations. The history behind an established brand is essential and changing something familiar to the masses may alienate devoted followers. With history in hand, older brands are able to incorporate...

One of the more lucrative projects for designers these days doesn’t even involve desktop. That’s because, in the last few years, more and more people have switched to mobile use, which also includes time spent shopping. A good rule of thumb as a designer is to go where your users are flocking, and you’ll find plenty of value there. Designing for retail apps is extremely interesting because it all comes down to conversions. One wrong design...

As a designer you’re expected to make the impossible happen. Time and time again, you’re expected to take an incredibly complex process and make it easy, simple and beautiful. When it’s handled well, you feel like a rock star. When we fail to live up to those heavy expectations, it leaves many of us feeling... deflated. Designers tend to be perfectionists by nature, we’re our own worst critic. We take those mistakes personally, as if...

You encounter emojis on a regular basis in your 21st-century, tech-savvy lifestyle, but what is the history of emojis? They’re all over the place, and you really can’t interact with any device or platform these days without someone sending you an emoji or you sending one out yourself. This speaks to the ubiquity of this form of communication. You spend some time on social media, and emojis are all over the place, whether it’s through Facebook’s...

More and more companies are constantly chopping and changing their design direction and user interface in a battle to stand out. Many are employing large teams of user interface designers to work on pretty simple products. When it comes to mobile apps, user interface design is little more than a marketing gimmick. As it stands, a typical workflow for creating an app would look something like this: Developing Concept Mapping App Screens Producing...

Mozilla’s rebranding project has been going on the entire Summer. Now, as we head into the Fall, the company’s rebranding objective is nearing the final stretch. It’s heading into the long-awaited design-development phase with four, potential designs being the final candidates for the company’s new image. In a new article on the Johnson Banks’ website (the design consultancy working with Mozilla on the rebranding) the company...

Every single designer reading this runs a blog, or at the very least a Medium account; around 5% (wildly anecdotal statistic) actually post on it. Most designers reading this speak at conferences, or at the very least have an opening slide mocked up in a sketchbook. Most designers reading this have a startup, a side-project, or an idea that will shift them from design professional, to owner who designs. In short those of us that design, spend...

In 2016, we’re living in an age of information saturation. At each turn we are bombarded with images and messages; everything we could ever want to know is at our fingertips (literally). With two thirds of us owning smart phones, and each of us checking our devices 85 times a day we are finally at the stage where enough is enough. We want simplicity back. This can be seen throughout the design world where distilled versions of logos are being created...

Getting punched hurts, but in our line of work you need to get used to taking some once in a while. The work we do isn’t for us or even for our clients. It’s for our client’s clients. And to reach those people, you need to put your work literally out there. Be it the internet, the streets in the form of a outdoor or a bus advertising, or even on TV, your work will always be public. And if all goes well, people will see and connect with it; each individual...